"Far From the Madding Crowd"

I remember one rather unusual book from my childhood - it was a compilation of descriptive passages from 'foreign classic literature', under categories like 'People', 'Landscape', 'Buildings'. I wonder such books still exist, but if they do, Thomas Hardy must be a prime source.

• Gabriel... on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress and general good character.
• He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.
• The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher -- its noiselessness that of a hawk.
  
• that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads
• The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if a little more pronounced, dignity if a little less.
  
• The young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips
• "Oh, never mind that," said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to be.
• ... used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a boulder after the ebb.

<Titular theme:>
__ but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.
__ For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man.